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Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Hip Hip Hurray for Hippie Hempfest!

Hempfest was this past weekend in Seattle. Hempfest is part celebration for the joys of cannabis and part protest against this nation’s Draconian marijuana laws. As you can imagine, Hempfest draws an unusual crowd of people. Someone less skilled in the art of humor and satire than me might approach an essay on this subject with something like this:

“A huge mushroom cloud hung over Myrtle Edwards Park this weekend of Hempfest. As I walked down the hill from my apartment and merged with the throngs of people entering and exiting the pro-cannabis festival I soon realized that the cloud was not a result of the tons of burning pot but the collective body odor of the hippies making their yearly Hajj.”

I wouldn’t write that because not only is it not funny but it is totally disrespectful towards hippies, a distant, less developed cousins of Homo sapiens on the evolutionary ladder.

I also don’t plan to set up a concession stand for deodorant at next year’s Hempfest. I will not buy a couple of sticks of deodorant and sprinkle them with so much arm pit hair that they look like Saddam Hussein’s upper lip. That would be in horribly bad taste and I just won’t do it.

I would like to report on one item that struck my attention at Weed Fest. There was some sort of chill-out room set up outside with lots of carpets and pillows. A DJ was playing really retarded new age music. And I swear this is true: There was a real hippie lying on a big hippie-sized pillow that looked like a dolphin. The hippie was probably so stoned that he thought he was riding a real dolphin. He probably was imagining that his girlfriend was a mermaid. There is no fucking way I could make that up.

Hempfest is pretty cool in my book because I think it is important for people to stand up for what they believe in. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of pot and hippies don’t like booze because there was no beer concession. I needed to stand up (or sit at the bar) for what I believe in so we stopped at the first bar outside of the park which happens to be the beautiful Waterfront restaurant. Having a mojito at the Waterfront and watching the sun set over Elliot Bay was like finding a pot of gold at the end of a BO rainbow.